"Society teaches us that having feelings and crying is bad and wrong. Well, that's baloney, because grief isn't wrong. There's such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown."

I don't know if you guys have heard, but The Office is ending tonight. I haven’t seen anything on the internet about it, so I wanted to make sure you all knew.

I have mixed feelings about the show ending. I'm having feelings all over the place, really, as I sit here eating lunch at my sad desk in my drab office (womp womp). Part of me is happy that the show is being put out of its misery, though this past season has been pretty damn fun, Pam and Jim drama aside because THAT SHIT WAS STRESSFUL. But most of me is like, "NO MY FRIENDS WHERE ARE YOU GOING I'M GOING TO MISS YOU SO MUCH NOOOOOOOOO."

It is a truth universally acknowledged (on this blog) that I get far too attached to fictional characters. So when my favorite TV shows end, I tend to feel things a little too much. Sometimes I think I feel more deeply for fictional happenings than I do for most things that happen in my actual life but that is a (far longer) post for a different day. Long story short (heh), I'm Abed, basically, only not as skinny or Y-chromosomey.



Anyway. Long-time readers may remember my fascination obsession with The Office. It began as so many love affairs do. There was a chance meeting on a random Thursday night and our instant connection turned into a deep affection that lasted years. I was in love from Season 1. I bought it on DVD and made Heidi watch it so I'd have someone else to talk about it with, not having yet found anyone IRL who loved the show as much as I did.

The most important part of the show at that time, for my perpetually-single (or-embroiled-in-unrequited-love) self was the relationship between Pam and Jim. I, like so many others, was deeply invested in whether Pam and Jim would ever end up together. So when they did, it gave me hope, it really did, that things would eventually work out for me, too. (I told you I put far too much investment in fictional relationships.)

I mentioned on Tumblr that last week's episode of The Office, especially that moment when Jim gave Pam the letter he'd written her so many years ago, gave me a lot of feelings. Sometimes it feels like I grew up with Jim and Pam. Not the growing up you do when you, like, go through puberty or whatever, but the growing up you’re forced into when you leave home, get your first job, and have to learn how to do things like pay bills on time and navigate the complicated relationships that come with adulthood . When the show started, I had just moved out of my parents' house, I was working at my first "real" job, but I was still a kid. I don't always feel like an adult now but, like Pam and Jim, I've grown up a lot (sometimes more than I'd like).

When Pam and Jim got married, Joe and I had been together for a little over a year. We watched that episode separately, as we weren't yet living together, but talked on the phone immediately after. We were both emotional, having, I suppose, both identified with Jim and/or Pam at more than one point in our lives. We weren't engaged yet (though we would be two months later) but I knew at some point Joe and I would get married. I’d known for a while. Jim and Pam were just paving the way for us.



We haven't yet followed Pam and Jim to Kid-Land (that place is terrifying) but who knows what the future holds? Pam and Jim made marriage less scary (until this season, geez) so maybe they can do the same for having kids. Only time will tell, I suppose.

Though I lost interest the last couple of seasons, I never really stopped caring about The Office. I kept up with it, even after at least two episodes that should have ended the series (Pam and Jim getting married and Michael Scott leaving). Though the quality went downhill, and I wished more than once for the show's demise, I'm sad to see it go. I'm going to miss my standing Thursday night date with my friends at Dunder-Mifflin and I'm glad I stuck around for Jim and Pam’s journey, even through random Baby #2 (what is that kid’s name?) and Brian the Book Mike Guy. I guess what I’m saying is, I'd follow Jim and Pam anywhere, even if it's to say good-bye. And it's going to be really, really hard.

Also, Joe doesn't believe me, but "khaleesi" is really fun to say. Khaleesi khaleesi khaleesi.

Every morning, I get to work and make myself a To Do list for the day. Or I make it the night before. Or I have stuff leftover from the previous day and THAT'S my To Do list. IT DOESN'T MATTER, my point is, I always have a To Do list of stuff. Just always.

After spending the morning doing everything BUT things actually on my list, I looked at my sad little uncrossed-off list and started adding things I'd already done just so I could cross stuff off. I wish I could tell you that this doesn't happen often but I'm trying not to be such a liar because Joe doesn't like it when I tell him stuff like, I don't know, that I speak Urdu, which is the lie I told him BEFORE WE EVEN MET because Natalie Portman taught me that lying is adorable.

I guess my point is that I don't have one, I just haven't written anything in YEARS and so this is me. Writing stuff. And throwing it all over the internet. Hi, Internet!

So here's something you may not know about, I don't know, LIFE. It turns out that if you spend all of Sunday watching Game of Thrones, the weekend goes really, really quickly. Also, here is some advice. If you're at the store because you tried to rent movies but you've A) seen all the good ones or B) don't feel like delving into the insanity that is Tree of Life on a Saturday night, and you decide instead that what you'd really rather watch is Game of Thrones so you stop getting spoiled about everything and finally figure out what the deal is with this Joffrey puke, but the library never has Game of Thrones in because everyone else wants to watch it, too, and the video store (Sidebar: Why do you call it the video store when they no longer have videos? Discuss.) never has it either or they have every disc BUT THE FIRST ONE so, yeah, obviously your only option is to buy it but when you get to the store, they only have the blu-ray version which is way more expensive (probably?), so you decide to be responsible and only get the first season instead of seasons one AND two, and I'm just here to tell you, go ahead and buy the second season while you're there, screw responsible, because what's going to happen is you'll spend Saturday night and Sunday morning watching the first season and then you'll realize you're going to run out of show before you run out of Sunday, so your husband is going to have to go out and buy the second season while you sit and fret about whether the store will still have it and so, to make yourself feel better, you sing the song you made up about Game of Thrones that goes (to the tune of the Lord of the Rings music): Game. Of. Thrones. It's the game, it's the game, it's the game, it's the game. It's the Game. Of. Thrones.

Which is a TERRIBLE song, way worse than the Doctor Who song you made up that just goes: Doctor Whoooooooooooooooo, Doctor Whoooooooooooooo, Doctor Who, Doctor Who... and so on.

So I guess my point is, now we're watching Game of Thrones, which is really cutting into my rewatching The X-Files project, but I will make that sacrifice because KHALEESI'S GOT DRAGONS Y'ALL!

why I volunteer

Yesterday, I took a different way home from work and drove past Oak Tree Corner. Oak Tree Corner is housed in a yellow Cape Cod, situated on a busy corner in Oakwood, the yard full of happy little trees and bright flowers. There’s a sign on the side that reads, “a place for grieving children.” This is my sixth year of volunteering there.

Oak Tree Corner was founded in 1996 as a place for grieving children and families to find some sort of comfort. Volunteers, or group facilitators, gather twice a month and lead groups of children in activities designed to facilitate discussion about their grief. I work with the youngest group, the Littles, usually aged 4-6, though there are also two other groups, the Middles and Teens. The parents meet in a separate group, led by another volunteer. All volunteers go through an extensive and, at times, emotionally exhausting training before leading these groups.

Whenever new volunteers start at Oak Tree Corner, they just observe on their first night. It can be overwhelming. Sure, there’s the training, but there’s always some anxiety, especially just starting out, when faced with a group of grieving children. “Will I say the wrong thing?” (Probably not, especially if you let the kids do most of the talking, which is what you’re supposed to do anyway.) “What if someone cries?” (Surprisingly, this hardly ever happens.) “I can’t do this.” (Yes. You can.)

After group, the volunteers gather to share their experiences from the night. On nights when we have new volunteers, the old volunteers take turns sharing why they decided to volunteer with Oak Tree Corner. I always say some variation of the same thing. I heard about Oak Tree Corner from a co-worker. I’d been looking for a place to volunteer where I wouldn’t be relegated to answering phones or stuffing envelopes, ideally working kids, and this seemed perfect. I was a bit nervous that I would be dealing with children in the midst of the grieving process, but it’s been life changing. It really has.

As I drove by Oak Tree Corner yesterday, I really thought about my answer to that question. How rote it’s become and how it’s the real answer, sure, but, since I’m emotionally closed-off with near strangers, it’s not the real real answer. It’s not the cheesy, gooey-center-of-my-heart answer.

I like my job but, most days, I don’t usually feel like I’m really making the world a better place. On the best days, I get to offer someone a job. That’s a good feeling. But, for the most part, I’m not changing lives.

Yesterday, some asshole blew up the Boston Marathon. I, like most people, followed along in horror, on Twitter, on Facebook, on the everlasting suck-cycle that is our news media, my stomach sinking as each new piece of information came in. Yet, in the aftermath of this terror, Patton Oswalt posted the following on Facebook:

Boston. Fucking horrible.

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."

But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

And I thought...THAT is why I volunteer. I want to be a part of Oswalt’s vast majority. I want to make the world a better place, in my own tiny way, even if it’s only by volunteering two days a month. It’s often difficult to measure our successes at Oak Tree Corner. It’ll most likely be years or, you know, NEVER before we know if anything we say or do benefits the children we work with. But I have to believe it does. I have to believe in trying to make the world a little brighter, in doing my part to tip the scales to Good. I have to believe that Oak Tree Corner, this small shining light, is really just one of many, a million stars brightening the night sky.

We should BUY A BAR.

Lately, I’ve been trying this new thing where I write a post and then let it sit for a day (or at least half a day) and revise it later. It’s much different than how I used to post things to my blog. I would just open Blogger, spew my word vomit into a draft, MAYBE read it a couple of times, and then hit publish.

So now I write something and try to forget about it for a bit. Which is nice. But it also leads to a new problem. I now catch myself just writing any old thing, really letting the stream of consciousness thing get away from me, and thinking, “oh, don’t worry about what you’re writing right now, Future!Jennie can fix it,” which is great and all, at the time, but I eventually turn into Future!Jennie and wish I hadn’t left a mess of words on my hands.

I guess, if nothing else, Future!Jennie is at least a day or two smarter than me, so that’s something.

This is a common occurrence, really, and not just with writing. I pretty much live my life by a code and that code is, “I’ll worry about it later.” AND BOY DO I. Here are some things I’ve worried about in the last 24 hours:

1. Whether Max sleeps too much.

2. What Phoebe's meows mean. Is she in pain? Hungry? Lonely?

3. Where Joe was, because he wasn’t home yet and OMG WHAT IF HE GOT IN A CAR ACCIDENT AND DIDN’T HAVE HIS PHONE OR WALLET AND THEY HAD NO IDEA WHO HE WAS.

4. Whether pulling a muscle in my neck while doing NOTHING means that I have a debilitating illness of some kind.

5. The stray(ish) cats that live in our neighborhood, namely one gray cat with giant balls (important detail) that used to hang out in our yard who I haven’t seen since the beginning of the winter. :(

6. That the deer who came back to our street are too cold at night. I wanted to put out some blankets but Joe wouldn’t let me. HE THINKS THEY LIVE IN A CAVE.

7. That I’ll bite into a carrot wrong and chip a tooth.

8. That if I can’t log into our bank accounts, it means someone has hacked us and stolen our identities, not that I typed my password wrong.

9. That River Song is going to show back up on Doctor Who. 

10. Life, The Universe, and Everything, obviously.

Aren’t you glad you’re not me right now? One might think, that if someone was prone to worrying about everything in the world, she might be more responsible about planning ahead and not procrastinating on everything in her life, but you’d be wrong. It’s the procrastination that leads to excessive worrying but if I didn’t have all this stuff to worry about, how would I spend my time? Productively? Perish that thought!

Last night, on my way to volunteering, I was complaining to my mom about how my day was so busy and I had to use my lunch break to put together my volunteering activity. She very wisely pointed out that the only reason I’d had to use my lunch break was because I’d procrastinated. I could have very easily come up with an activity over the weekend or last week or FREAKING WHENEVER, but did I? (No, obviously. Weren’t you listening just now?)

I’ve always been this way. In elementary school, I used to put off doing my homework each night until the last possible minute, and sometimes that minute was after bedtime, when I’d then sneak into the bathroom next to my bedroom and do my homework in the light of the bathroom nightlight. I can remember standing in line at school in the morning, waiting behind the other kids, to hand in my spelling book or whatever, and quickly finishing the assignment WHILE IN THE LINE. WTF?

I guess it’s comforting to know I’ve always been this way and will probably always be this way and it’s OK, because it’s who I am and I’d probably be even worse at being someone else. So I’ll just continue to let Future!Jennie worry about everything and deal with the consequences later. It’s probably not healthy but at least I’m not alone.

working on my backwards walk

Everything seems to be making me super nostalgic lately and I don’t know if it’s because I’m listening to music from high school and college and watching old favorite TV shows or if I’m doing those things because I’m suffering from extreme nostalgia.

We went to see Frightened Rabbit last Tuesday, LIKE YOUNG PEOPLE, even though it meant we’d be out late on a school night because: Frightened Rabbit, OK? The concert was at Bogart’s in Cincinnati, and, not being huge fans of Bogart’s (the now defunct Southgate House being far superior), we went anyway because: FRIGHTENED RABBIT, OK? Bogart’s isn’t that bad, really. It’s just very cave-like, kind of like a hobbit hole but darker and dirtier and with stickier floors.

I looked up directions to Bogart’s the day before the concert, not because I didn’t remember how to get there (though...I didn’t) or even needed to know how to get there (Joe always knows how to get places) but because I wanted to see how long it would take us to get there from our house, so I could plan plenty of time for dinner, drinks, etc. Planning! It’s what’s for dinner.

As I so often do when looking up directions, I went to street view almost immediately because I like to pretend the tiny, yellow guy is me and I’m actually visiting those places. As soon as I set his/my sights on Bogart’s, though, I was hit by a wave of extreme nostalgia.

My Photoshop skills are unparalleled.

I don’t know where it came from. I’ve seen a handful of concerts at Bogart’s but I didn’t realize it was a place that held much emotional significance for me. I saw Spoon there, before I met Joe, though I found out later that he was there, too. We saw Andrew Bird there a few years ago, but my most vivid memory from that concert was that I was really sick and hopped up on cold medicine and I whined the whole time until we left early. I still feel bad about that.

I’m not sure when we stopped going to so many concerts. We don’t have as much money to spend on them now that we have a house, because it turns out having a house is basically like having a giant, needy baby. And we really only go to concerts if they’re on a weekend, our reasoning being that it’s irresponsible to get home on a school night after midnight, especially if something important is going on at work the next day. The repercussions are worse now if I stay up too late or have that extra beer. I’m busier at work and have more responsibilities than just showing up.

So maybe that’s it. I was just feeling nostalgic for another time in my life, that time when it felt like I had fewer responsibilities, more freedom to do whatever I wanted and could say SCREW FUTURE!JENNIE AND HER DUMB, WHINY FACE without too many negative consequences. Yet, when I woke up on Wednesday, I wasn’t all that tired. Work wasn’t any more of a struggle than it normally is. And I was happy to realize I could still go out and act like a young person during the week.

And as I stood at that weeknight concert, listening to Frightened Rabbit play a setlist not all that different than the one they played when we saw them a few years ago, I thought about how much my life has changed, what with the marriage and the house and all of my friends squirting out babies, but also how I’m still very much that same person I was then. I’m still a total weirdo, I still hate standing the whole time at concerts (my feet get tired! everyone is taller than me!), and I even have the exact same concert wardrobe that I’ve always had: hoodie, jeans, chucks. So maybe getting old won’t be all that bad. At least I’ll be comfortable, you know? (See above, re: chucks).

This entire post was just an excuse to post a Tennant GIF.

I squeed myself

Can we talk about Pride & Prejudice for a bit? This should serve as a warning to those who don't give a shit about P&P to stop reading because I am about to lit-nerd out in a huge way. Like, for real, those of you who've never asked yourself "what would Elizabeth Bennet do?" kindly step to the left.

It's a truth universally acknowledged (seriously, it's well documented all over the internet), that I'm a fan of Pride & Prejudice, along with, you know, Jane Austen in general. I will read or watch pretty much anything Pride & Prejudice-related, though I have managed to steer clear of most of the fiction that expands upon the Bennet-Darcy story. I have to draw the line somewhere.

But I have read Bridget Jones's Dairy (duh) and watched Lost in Austen (shut it) and I've read Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (well, most of it) so when I heard about The Lizzie Bennet Diaires, obviously I knew I had to watch. When it first started, I used to only watch the videos every couple of weeks, catching up on everything all at once, but for the last month or so, I've barely been able to wait until I get home from work to watch new videos. Mondays and Thursdays suddenly became the greatest days of the week and not for reasons like, oh, I don't know, Memorial Day or a new episode of Community.

Do I need to do a spoiler warning? I mean, you know how P&P ends, right, so really there's no such thing as spoiling so shut up I'm not spoiling shit. Anyway. This past Monday’s video ended with a HUGE CLIFFHANGER, if it can be true that something based on literature written 200 years ago could ever cliffhang anything, so yesterday, when I saw the new video was posted, I LITERALLY SQUEED. Which is gross, because I'm an old now and I thought my squeeing days were far behind me.

I didn't think I was that obsessed with LBD because I'd pretty much only been half-hardheartedly watching it, until it got to a certain point (oh, like maybe when Lizzie went to Pemberley and Darcy started being all dreamy) and then I was hooked and wouldn't have stopped watching if you paid me, unless you paid me a million dollars or something, I mean, what am I? An idiot? Oh, wait.

I was going to embed yesterday's video so you could see what I was squeeing about but it wouldn't have the same effect on you unless you've watched LBD from the beginning, which I guess you can go do right now if you have something like eight hours to kill. Go for it! Who needs sleep? Not you. NOT WHEN DARCY'S ON THE LINE.

Anyway. Do you think the original readers of P&P shipped Lizzie and Darcy? Did they read P&P and then daydream about Lizzie and Darcy frolicking through fields of flowers, gazing adoringly at one another or even GASP grazing hands? I hope so. I'd like to think I have at least that in common with a proper lady.

I hope they do Persuasion next. Somehow. In my advanced age, the wistfulness and missed opportunities of Persuasion really do speak to me more than P&P. Just don't tell 24-year-old me, she'd probably freak the fuck out and light 30-year-old me on fire.

"I already feel like an idiot most of the time anyway."

Your mind is a pretty effective time machine, provided you have a good memory and at least a little bit of an imagination. The only drawback is that you can't really change anything unless you can somehow change your own memories AND the memories of all the people who were involved in whatever you're changing. So you can see how that might be difficult. It's one thing to impose your will on your own self, but on other people? Unless you have an Inception-machine or know Joseph Gordon-Levitt, you can just forget it.

But you can pretend things changed. You can even change your own memories enough, just for yourself, that it helps you in the future. Some may call this denial, but I just call it playing the system. I find myself so often hung up on things that have happened to me, things that I no longer have any control over, if I ever did, things that I cannot change now, no matter how hard I wish for it, and yet I dwell on them, well, forever. The whole making mistakes and learning from them has always been hard for me. Like most people, I'd rather not make mistakes, I'd rather just do things perfectly the first time, otherwise aren't I wasting time?

No. Duh, NO. Everyone knows it’s important to make mistakes, because at least you're trying, but it's hard to really take that to heart, to do something about it. Much easier, really, to stay still, doing the things you know how to do and not having to worry about messing up or looking foolish.

I'm not sure why this is something I ever worry about. I try so hard NOT to make a fool of myself and it's usually all for nothing. I end up looking like an idiot at some point during the day, it's just going to happen. That’s just who I am. I'M AN IDIOT. And I'm not trying to demean myself or anything, I like being an idiot. It's much more fun than being serious all the time. And yet, it bothers me sometimes that people don’t seem to take me all that seriously.

This is mostly my fault, I’m pretty sure. I'm more likely to joke and make sarcastic comments and belittle myself than I am to actually offer helpful advice or suggestions. I’m not sure why I do that. Chandler Bing my way through life. (Oh, right, defense mechanism. Duh. Plus, Chandler is the funniest Friend. Who doesn't want to be the funniest?)

I wish I spent less time worrying about the past, I really do, if only because it does no good. Sure, it's helpful to remember your mistakes (if you've been brave enough to make any), but there comes a point when you have to stop dwelling and start thinking about what you're going to do next. Hopefully, it doesn't involve sitting and moping and getting all verklempt while you listen to The National, unless you're me and today is today*. No. Stop that. Get up, take a walk, sit down, read a book, write some nonsense, just do SOMETHING.

Your mind is a time machine after all, bigger on the inside, so just imagine what it can do. 

*I actually wrote this like a month ago, so I feel the need to point out that today I am not moping and listening to The National, today I am high on cold medicine and enjoying Spotify 90s radio.